The cost of a decent MAME / emulation front-end is anywhere from $30 to $50 and in some cases, the base install is free and one is only purchasing higher quality skins, high-res preview videos, etc. But I'm about ready to take the plunge and looking at my options, and willing to pluck down $40 for these options since, ya know, this will likely be the last time I ever configure an emulator.

I bought CDR-WIN (I think that was the name) years ago when it was the only thing that would reliably burn PlayStation games. I remember specifically it was $35 to buy but only $25 for students, so I had to register it using a friend's college e-mail address to get the discount.

Of course the cost of the software was like half the cost of a single PlayStation game back then, so it paid off quickly.

Alcohol 180% was hilarious for the same reason; do they expect their target demographic to actually buy their product?

Pretty sure that the "new" DVD decryptor is AnyDVD which IIRC used to be DVDFab. I love that these assholes seriously expect people to pay for a program that is expressly designed for you to steal things.

http://asia.cnet.com/crave/seagate-60tb-hard-drives-on-the-horizon-62213954.htm

Based on past experience, when I read about breakthroughs in technology that should happen "within the next decade," usually they mean "in six months." I remember when the 1tb drives finally came out they were like, "well we can never make a bigger drive than HO HO HERE'S A 2TB SUCKERS!"

Breakthru in hard drive technology??! TRIPLE. ALL. PRICES!

I'd say 3/4 of my DVDs have no extra features to speak of. For them, I'm just ripping to DivX/XviD. For a while I was messing with shrinking the picture and doing two-passes to get the best possible picture in the least amount of space, but now I'm just doing the original size and one-pass. The quality's nearly the same and it's a whole lot faster, although the file sizes are slightly bigger.

For the remaining fourth that have special features, I'll either do like you said and keep ISOs of the disks, or (gasp) retain the discs themselves. For creating ISOs I've been messing around with BDlot and while it doesn't have a lot of options, it works as advertisted. Insert a disc, click a button, and get an ISO. DVD Decrypter was the tool of choice a few years ago but it doesn't handler some of the newer copy protections.

I read an article this week that there's been a breakthru in hard drive technology and that 6tb drives are imminent and 60tb drives will be possible so, with drives like that keeping ISOs around wouldn't be such a big deal.

[quote="Flack"]One of the problems with downloading movies is that it's easy to find mainstream stuff, but hard to find more exotic releases.[/quote]

I once searched for an obscure Japanese film series (the latest incarnation of "Yo Yo Girl Cop," if anyone is interested), and the only active link was to a private tracker that specializes in asian movies and television.

Ditto for anime and even older video games; niche sites that cater to these crowds do exist. Broadway musicals though? Maybe a sub directory of a movie site? Or if you want just the music and not the stage play itself, there are torrents out there for that.


[quote="Tdarcos"]I'd love to put some of the DVDs that I or my brother have - legally - on my computer so I could just watch them [...] [/quote]

A program called DVD Decrypter (likely superseded by other programs by now, since all rights to this specific program were confiscated in court by some iteration of the MPAA) duplicates a DVD as an image file. Mount using Daemon Tools or Alcohol 80%/120% and its the closest thing to having the full disc without the... Err... Disc.

[quote="Flack"]I am in the process of ripping all of my DVDs to DIVX/XVID format. [/quote]

I'd love to put some of the DVDs that I or my brother have - legally - on my computer so I could just watch them instead of having to go get them from storage, bring them back, load them, then either forget and leave it around or take it back to my storage unit. I live in a single room; most of my possessions (except what I lost in the eviction) are in a storage facility. When you're wheelchair bound taking long trips is a pain. I didn't know there was anything available to rip DVDs. What are you using?

One of the problems with downloading movies is that it's easy to find mainstream stuff, but hard to find more exotic releases. Years ago this resulted in me coining the phrase, "that's not what my people steal."

Years ago when the first Harry Potter film hit theaters, my little cousin desperately wanted a copy. I got online, found a version someone had recorded with their camcorder, downloaded it, burned it to a DVD, and mailed it to her. New, hot release movie -- that's what my people steal.

The next week, she asked if I could download some piano sheet music for some musical from the 70s. I'm sure in her mind, if I could find one of those things, I could find the other, but I couldn't -- because "that's not what my people steal".

Action thrillers? Kid movies? Cult classics? Check, check, check. That's what my people steal. Broadway musicals? Good luck.

I am in the process of ripping all of my DVDs to DIVX/XVID format. The goal is to have all my movies stored in one place so that they can be viewed on any television without my children touching them with their greasy and apparently scratchy fingers.

Like with my mp3s, what I have discovered so far is that, if it's available, it is quicker for me to download movies than to rip them myself. To rip a DVD to DIVX format takes me around an hour. To download one takes less than 5 minutes. Downloading them makes more sense if you can find them, especially when you have more than 1,000 DVDs sitting on a shelf, mocking you.

The elephant in the room is that some better compression technique will come along. Actually, some already have. H.264 does HD quality rips, although not all of my streaming devices will play them at this point.